Is First Amendment really the most important?

David Sirota trots out the discredited argument that the First Amendment takes precedence over others, simply because it is the first. Two historical facts disprove the “primacy” argument beyond reasonable doubt.

The Bill of Rights submitted to the states for ratification had 12 proposed amendments, not 10. Where were the two unratified amendments sequenced? At the beginning. Had they been ratified, what we now call the First Amendment would have become known as the Third Amendment.

More than 200 years later, the second of these unratified articles was finally ratified, and became the 27th Amendment. It provides that congressional pay raises cannot take effect until after the next election. By Sirota’s reasoning, this provision is more important than freedom of speech.

In any case, it can be reasonably argued that the most important article in the Bill of Rights is at the end, not at the beginning. The Ninth Amendment states that failure to expressly list an individual right in the Constitution is not evidence that the right does not exist.

Eric Krein, Lakewood

This letter was published in the Aug. 31 edition. For information on how to send a letter to the editor, click here.

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